By Emelie Rutherford
The head of the National Guard Bureau said yesterday he is eager to learn how new plans being hashed out for the C-27J Joint Cargo Aircraft (JCA) will impact his needs for equipment including a new small-transport aircraft.
Air Force Gen. Craig McKinley, chief of the National Guard Bureau, told a Washington think-tank crowd he’s “thrilled to get the (JCA) program started.”
“It was an on-time on-budget development,” he said about the L-3 Communications [LLL]-Alenia North America aircraft. “It meets the niche of rapidly deploying small amounts of cargo right to the foxhole.”
Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn is expected to meet this week with Army and Air Force leaders about the Pentagon’s new JCA plan–spelled out in its fiscal year 2010 budget request–to transfer the Army-Air Force program to the air service’s control and cut the buy from 78 to 38 aircraft. The briefing was initially expected for last week but was delayed, McKinley said.
Asked at the Center for National Policy event if 38 JCAs are enough, McKinley said “that’s the number in the budget.”
“I sign up to 38,” the four-star general added. “If the plane proves itself, then at least we’ve got the program started and then we can go beyond it.”
At a May 21 Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Air Force budget, service Chief of Staff Gen. Norton Schwartz said he sees “38 C-27s as the floor and not the ceiling.” The number of JCAs will be revisited this summer during Quadrennial Defense Review discussions, Air Force Secretary Michael Donley said at the time.
McKinley noted yesterday that Schwartz wants to see more of Lockheed Martin‘s [LMT] larger C-130 transport aircraft in theater. McKinley said the Guard could share some of the C-130s it currently has.
The general told reporters after his speech that as the JCA talks proceed he is concerned about the smaller and aging C-23 Sherpa transport aircraft, built by Thales subsidiary Short Brothers, which the C-27 was intended to eventually replace.
“So when all this filters out, I’ll be really eager to see how it plays into what I need, which is a C-23 Sherpa replacement, (the ability to) alleviate the hours on the CH-47 (heavy-lift helicopter, built by Boeing [BA]), and also (do) the direct-support mission for the Army,” he said.
The vice chiefs of staff of the Army and Air Force will present information early this month on the path forward for the JCA to Lynn, McKinley said.
“I’m only the user of the airplane,” he said. “They’re the ones who have to arbitrate the roles and missions and numbers.”
The information conveyed to Lynn will cover the new JCA target number and the Army’s need for the aircraft for a direct-support mission, McKinley said. Lynn will weigh whether to field the aircraft to the Air National Guard, a setup McKinley said he supports.